European Commission says U.S. airstrikes not helpful in bringing long-term peace to Somalia
BRUSSELS, Belgium: The U.S. airstrikes in southern Somalia as part of an anti-terror operation will not contribute to bringing about long-term peace to the African nation, the EU’s executive office said Tuesday.
“Any incident of this kind is not helpful in the long term,” European Commission spokesman Amadeu Altafaj Tardio said.
We see things differently.
A war on terror – we were serious about that, by the way – is necessarily a war on terrorists. Long-term peace for Somalia may be an important consequence of that campaign but it is not the goal, or otherwise we could have endorsed the Islamic Courts Union’s program of extrajudicial shootings and intimidation of their cowed citizenry.
Our goal is far more simple: Find the people who get their jollies by murdering our citizens and other innocents, and then flush them out from within their comfortable safe havens and into the open where they can be smashed like bugs.
Pour encourager les autres.
They could have had it their way – they were welcome to their faith and traditions, so long as it didn’t result in some of them flying airplanes into skyscrapers or blowing up embassies and subway trains. But we’re not interested in a dialogue with al Qaeda – we understand them perfectly.
If the EU wants “helpful,” then they can remove the caveats restricting the freedom of movement of their forces in Afghanistan so that they can be employed against the Taliban militants who blow up girls’ schoolhouses and assassinate local government officials. Or they can pass the ammunition. Or else they can just get the hell out of our way.
Just don’t lecture us about “helpful.”
As the President said following 9-11, “You’re either with us, or against us.”
As far as I’m concerned, that sentiment applies to the Ted Kennedys and Muthas of the world as well.
You would almost think they had… um… a different agenda than… well the rest of the freedom loving world. Helpful doesn’t seem to fit into the prosecution of the bad-guys.
You know Bomber Guy, he didn’t just say that in a speech either. I worked for a Fortune 100 company at that time whose CEO considered Bush a friend. In a “Employee Town Meeting” about 6 weeks after 9/11, the CEO relayed that he was in a meeting with Bush right after 9/11 and said someone came in talking about what the Chinese Ambassador wanted in relation to 9/11 and Bush told the staffer “You tell him either they are with us or against us, make a choice”.
Well, all this sounds good, but as Eddie over at Live from the FDNF points out, the real issue with Somalia is not African Al Queda terrorists running around there. He explains it in a very clear way. http://fdnf.typepad.com/
Mr. Huber has an interesting take on this as well, looking at under whose authority these airstrikes were conducted.
http://zenhuber.blogspot.com/
Well, as for CDR Huber, USN (ret), there is at least as much authority for us to strike known al Qaeda terrorists in failed states today as there was when a previous president sent TLAM missiles into aspirin factories in Sudan…
And although I appreciate FDNF’s concerns about HOA instability, I think there are worse things still than al Qaeda-allied Islamist governments squatting over the levers of national power. The Taliban was welcome in Kabul at first.
Read that book, know how it ends.
Yeah, I wasted my time going over to read the cited blogs, typical progressive claptrap and traitorous aid and comfort to the enemy.IMO.
EU position sounds like they have been sharing too many snails with the cheese eating surrender monkeys. Watch for Cindy Sheehan to show up for a photo op with that clown, her highness Pelosi to praise his diplomatic skills.
And the EU has done so much for long term peace in Somalia, too!
/BS off
Instructions for the EU (and anyone else this applies to).
1. Gather sand.
2. Form into a column.
3. Pound said column.
CDR Huber, USN Ret..linked w/Kos, etc….
He needs to be drug tested.
Should we have asked the UN first? What’s his point besides bashin’ Bush and jeapordizing his own security at home.
b2
And now it looks like we missed the big fish. First reports have next to no credibility, give nothing validity until we have the “boots-on-heads” report. In this case, it looks like we struck at a high-probability target, but the boots-on-heads didn’t find our targets, only lower level thugs.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070111/wl_africa_afp/somaliaunrestethiopia
Zane-
Shrug.
Still worth the 105 rounds for “8-10″ mid-level types?
Wish it had been 80-100….
I like that- “Boots-on-heads”..
Perfect. The soles of our flight boots on their heads. Hmmm, other than dumping pig waste on ‘em from altitude nothing could be worse.
B2